Monday, August 25, 2008

Let's start with a Cookie Wrapped Fig, think of it as a blanket wrapping a naked fig! These are pretty simple to make but you'll end up with great looking special cookies that you can dress up as you like. I don't even know if they should be called cookies or micro pies or what, but either way you want to call them, they are delicious!

Cream the butter with the sugar. Add the egg yolk and vanilla and beat more until the they're completely incorporated in the butter-sugar mixture. Mix the flour, salt, baking powder and the chinese five spice, and add to the first mixture. Mix just until all comes together. Form a ball, wrapp in cling film and take to the fridge at least 2 hours. You can keep it in the fridge for a couple of days or freeze.

Peel some figs (the amount will depend on the size of them, but you can start with about 12). Take the dough out of the fridge and roll it as you would to make cut-out cookies. Place the figs spread-out on top of the rolled dough and cut circles around them that could be big enough to wrap them. Wrap the dough arround each fig, rolling it in between your hands to mantain the fig shape. You'll have a lot of dough at the top, just cut it and shape it a bit thinner, like the top of real figs. Bake in pre-heated oven at 180ºC (350ºF) until golden brown.

You can leave them plain, but I did a thin icing to give them a nice shine. You can go crazy and do a green icing to make them really similar to real figs, I know they'll be super cool in green because green is really popular right now!

For the icing just mix powder sugar with milk until you have a consistence that you're happy with. There's no going wrong here, you can make a thicker one and roll the fig cookies in it or you can make a thinner one and poor it over them. The one that I made had the consistency of liquid yogurt and I applied it with a small brush. I then put some chopped pistachios on top of each cookie/fig while the icing was still wet.

* I love to use Chinese Five Spice in sweets and I think it was a good way to say goodbye to the Chinese Olympics! It worked really well with the figs, but if you don't have it just use any spices you fancy. Chinese Five Spice is a blend of 5 spices that usually are cinnamon (or cassia), anise seeds, star anise, ginger and cloves, so you can even make your own if you want.

I was very happy with these! Imagine bitting into a crumbly spiced cookie and finding a soft but still kind of fresh fig. Are you imagining it allready? Don't you wanna eat it? So, go! Go make yourself some! What? You don't have figs? Try with other fruits and let me know!

Just look at that fig inside!

Was this fig fun or what? Do you like chocolate? So come back tomorrow then, for Day 2 of Fig Fun Week!

I'm kind of bummed, I've never tasted a fig, cooked or baked with one and don't really ever see them around here, so I probably can't join in the fun this week. But I am excited to see all you have up your sleeve! ;)

Hi,Love this idea (I saw you pic in foodgawker) but I can't read your post. For some reason the print blends into the background. I thought you would like to know since maybe other people are having the same issue...

I'm amazed by the amount of people that never tasted a fresh fig! I really thought they were much more comunly available everywhere! Maybe you can use dry figs doing this, it will be like a Fig Newton I'm imaginning... Or other fruits, like apple pieces (I'll try that myself), bananas and even strawberries. Anyway thank you so much for the lovely comments! I hope you don't get to tired this week with all the fig craziness!